Yiddish Radio Project

Summary

The Yiddish Radio Project is based on a series of stories featured on NPR's All Things Considered in the spring of 2002. The series highlights the golden age of Yiddish-American broadcasting in the 1930s to '50s. In its heyday Yiddish radio was heard from coast to coast, with a dozen stations in New York alone. All that survives from that incredible era are 500 hours of material preserved on 1,000 fragile discs--all of them rescued from storerooms and attics and even dumpsters, by one man, Henry Sapoznik, a musician and historian who has been on a fifteen-year mission to save every remnant from the "golden age" of Yiddish radio. This collection is an unprecedented intimate snapshot of American Jewish life during the '30s and '40s. The series features translations of the Yiddish language broadcasts by a cast that includes Eli Wallach, Carl Reiner, and Isaiah Sheffer.